From S3 Static Hosting to a Global Website with CloudFront and Route 53
As part of my hands-on AWS learning, Day 1 focused on understanding the fundamentals of AWS infrastructure and deploying a static portfolio website using AWS services.
The session covered the following core concepts and services:
- IAM — Identity and Access Management
- EC2 — Elastic Compute Cloud
- S3 — Simple Storage Service
- AWS Networking fundamentals
- Presigned URLs
- CloudFront — Content Delivery Network
- Route 53 — DNS and domain routing
The main hands-on activity was hosting my portfolio website using Amazon S3 and configuring CloudFront for global content delivery.
- AWS Infrastructure Foundation
The session began with an introduction to AWS infrastructure and the role of different cloud services.
EC2 — Elastic Compute Cloud
Amazon EC2 provides virtual computing resources in the AWS Cloud. It can be used to run applications, backend services, websites, and other workloads that require computing power.
The session introduced the basic purpose of EC2 as a fundamental AWS compute service.
- IAM — Identity and Access Management
IAM is used to manage identities and control access to AWS resources.
It helps define:
- Who can access AWS resources
- Which resources they can access
- What actions they are allowed to perform
For the hands-on session, a temporary AWS user account was provided to access the required resources.
This gave me an understanding of how authentication and authorization are handled within AWS.
- Amazon S3 — Simple Storage Service
The main practical activity started with Amazon S3.
Amazon S3 is an object storage service that can be used to store different types of data, including:
- Images
- Videos
- Documents
- Website files
- Application data
For this session, I used S3 to store and host the files required for my portfolio website.
Creating an S3 Bucket
The first step was creating an S3 bucket.
S3 bucket names must be globally unique, meaning the same bucket name cannot already exist anywhere in AWS.
After creating the bucket, I also added tags using key-value pairs to help identify and organize the resource.
For example:
Key: Project
Value: Portfolio
Default Encryption
Next, I explored the default encryption configuration for the S3 bucket.
Encryption helps protect objects stored in S3 by encrypting the data at rest.
Understanding storage security is an important part of working with cloud infrastructure.
- Presigned URLs
Another concept covered during the session was the use of presigned URLs.
A presigned URL provides temporary access to a specific S3 object without requiring the entire bucket to be made publicly accessible.
This can be useful when a file needs to be shared temporarily while keeping the underlying S3 resource protected.
- Hosting a Portfolio Website Using S3
The main hands-on task was deploying my portfolio website.
I uploaded my index.html file to the S3 bucket.
The index.html file acts as the entry point for the static website.
Static Website Configuration
After uploading the website file, I configured the required settings under the Properties section of the S3 bucket.
The static website hosting configuration allows S3 to serve the HTML content as a website.
- S3 Permissions and Bucket Policy
The next step involved configuring the access settings for the bucket.
Under the Permissions section, I worked with:
- Block Public Access settings
- Bucket Policy
These settings determine how users and AWS services can access the objects stored in the bucket.
Understanding permissions was an important part of the deployment because storage configuration and access control need to be considered together.
- Deploying Through Amazon CloudFront
After configuring the S3 website, I used Amazon CloudFront for content delivery.
CloudFront is AWS's Content Delivery Network (CDN). It distributes content through a global network of edge locations so that content can be delivered from locations closer to users.
For the portfolio website, the basic architecture became:
text
User
|
v
CloudFront
|
v
Amazon S3
|
v
index.html
8. Route 53
The session also introduced **Amazon Route 53**, which is AWS's DNS service.
Route 53 can be used to manage domain names and route users to AWS resources such as CloudFront distributions.
The overall request flow can be represented as:
text
User
|
v
Route 53
|
v
CloudFront
|
v
Amazon S3
|
v
Portfolio Website
This helped me understand how DNS, content delivery, and storage services can work together as part of a web deployment.
9. Final Architecture
The complete architecture from this hands-on session can be summarized as:
User
|
v
Route 53
DNS Routing
|
v
CloudFront
CDN
|
v
Amazon S3
Static Website
|
v
index.html
Each service has a specific responsibility:
| Service | Purpose |
| ---------- | --------------------------------------- |
| IAM | Identity and access management |
| EC2 | Cloud computing |
| S3 | Object storage and static website files |
| CloudFront | Global content delivery |
| Route 53 | DNS and domain routing |
Key Takeaways
Day 1 session 1 helped me move from understanding individual AWS services to seeing how they can work together in a real deployment.
The most important concepts I learned were:
1. Creating and configuring an S3 bucket
2. Understanding globally unique S3 bucket names
3. Configuring default encryption
4. Understanding S3 permissions and bucket policies
5. Using presigned URLs for temporary object access
6. Hosting a static website using S3
7. Using CloudFront as a CDN
8. Understanding the role of Route 53 in DNS routing
9. Understanding the basic relationship between storage, DNS, and content delivery
The practical part of the session was particularly useful because I was able to take a simple `index.html` file and understand the steps involved in making it accessible through AWS infrastructure.
What's Next?
This session gave me a foundation for understanding AWS infrastructure and cloud-based application deployment.
Going forward, I want to explore how these foundational services connect with compute, databases, networking, security, and application deployment to build more complete cloud-based systems.
**Day 1 session 1 complete. More cloud infrastructure to explore.**
#AWS #AmazonS3 #CloudFront #Route53 #IAM #EC2 #CloudComputing #AWSCloud #DevOps #AIML #LearningInPublic
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